August 31, 2004

Major milestone for me tonight: I got my home automation computer set up as a server! Figured out no-ip.com’s service and configured web sharing all by my little lonesome. Now I just have to get James Sentman’s excellent X2web application up and running and I’ll be able to check and change my house’s lights, etc, from anywhere in the world… even from a WAP-enabled webphone! Too cool.

Email from Dad:Pathology report indicated CLEAR margins and NO lymphnode involvement. Mom
will probably have some radiation in a couple of weeks (as soon as she has
totally healed) to catch any possible stray cells.

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers everyone. Now mom can get on to healing. *whew*

August 29, 2004

I’m about thiiiis close to closing all comments in my blog off to everyone. Just yesterday I checked the logs and got no fewer than ninety-six spam comments in a single day. And they’re not all on one post or set of posts, but rather scattered all about everywhere, so it would take me hours of work to undo what an automated bot did in a few minutes. #$%# spammers.

And for some reason turning off the html and auto-link options in MT doesn’t stop html from auto linking. Either it’s not working right or I don’t understand it completely (wouldn’t surprise me).

I tried to put a box in where commenters would be required to enter some kind of number hidden in a graphic, but MT isn’t advanced enough to allow me to do that.

The links aren’t doing anything more than using up space and taking a tiny bit of bandwidth. I just hate the fact that someone is using Giles’ computer, and MY blog, to increase their google pagerank. Enough with the tramad0l and gluc0phage already! aargh.

The Olympic closing ceremonies concluded tonight, and thanks to Tivo, we caught them all. Nothing has the same wonderful feeling of global solidarity and peace as this incredible event, and we were able to see most of the nights (including the unusual thrill of watching a friend win silver). Greece was special because of all the historical locations, and the inclusion of the real-leaf laurel was inspired. 4 years until Beijing.

I’ll leave off with one of my favorite poems of all time. Read and memorized in 7th grade, it’s wistful longing is somehow appropriate today.

To An Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

via reuters: Asked if he believed that he and Kerry “served on the same level of heroism,” Bush replied, “No, I don’t. I think him going to Vietnam was more heroic than my flying fighter jets. He was in harm’s way and I wasn’t. On the other hand, I served my country. Had my unit been called up, I would have gone.”

After upgrading my Mac about a year ago, I finally broke down and upgraded my old Kensington Turbo Mouse to a Kensington Expert Mouse Pro. Trust me, if you ever get used to a serious pro mouse, you’ll never go back. Ahh… it’s nice to have a good tool again.

August 27, 2004

I think I’ve got comments working again. Somehow IP banning got switched on for the server’s address (I haven’t messed around in that config area for months, so I have no idea how it happened). So if you tried to comment and got bounced, it should work now. Apologies. Please give the comments a try to make sure they’re working. Same caveat: the comments may timeout and tell you that they couldn’t connect even though the comment was sent. Check to make sure?

Apologies to everyone who has tried to post comments here recently. There’s something wrong with the Movable Type commenting system. I have all the settings the same as they’ve ever been, but MT won’t let anyone post a comment (even me). I’ll try and figure out what’s wrong and let everyone know when it’s working again. Thanks for the patience.

This is interesting. Would that the lines were right down the 0% mark- not that there were an equal number of positive and negative stories, but that the media refrained from opinionated stories at all. How about just a straight-ahead report? Sure, give us commentary and bias on your opinion shows (hardball, hannity, etc). But shouldn’t the news shows just, er report the news? Sorry, it’s my first official day back at work and I’m cranky.

“If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we’re morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.”Alice Cooper

How about a 100 Megabit per second internet connection for $80/month? All you have to do is move to London to do it. Or you could just “settle” for their 10mbps connection. The U.S. telecom pricing structure is so lame.

August 10, 2004

Many of my friend know that I used to be a river guide in Colorado. Erin and I leave to go up there for a while tomorrow (blogging will be suspended until we return). In the meantime, check this link out. it not only has a description of every rapid on the section of river I ran (100+ trips in three summers on this section of river for me), but it’s got some cool movies of each rapid. Hopefully we’ll be able to grab a boat and do it again when we’re there.